Learning Debian GNU/Linux

ISPs use a variety of dialogs to make a PPP connection. Often the most
difficult part of configuring your computer to make a PPP connection
is specifying dialog options consistent with those required by your
ISP, which may not be especially helpful in explaining the necessary
options to you.

For example, most ISPs use one of three PPP login procedures: PAP
(Password Authentication Protocol), CHAP (Challenge-Handshake
Authentication Protocol), or ordinary user/password
authentication. PAP is currently the most popular of the three
procedures. If you ask the tech support person at your ISP what login
procedure your ISP uses, the tech support person may have no idea what
you're talking about, because most users run Microsoft Windows, and
Windows Dial-Up Networking handles the login procedure
transparently.

The
wvdial program transparently establishes
a PPP connection in much the same way as Windows Dial-Up
Networking. It understands a variety of possible dialogs used by
ISPs. In most cases, it will analyze data sent by your ISP and respond
with the proper data in the format required by the ISP.

To use
wvdial, be sure that you've
established your nameserver configuration, as described in Chapter 10,
Setting Up a Linux-Based LAN. Then, issue the following commands

route del default
wvdial &

The command generates quite a bit of output, which makes further
use of this virtual terminal distracting. The simplest solution is to
switch to another virtual terminal, by pressing
Alt-
n, where
n stands for the virtual terminal
(1-7). Alternatively, you can direct the output of the command
to a file, by typing this command in place of the one given
earlier:

wvdial 2>/tmp/wvdial.messages &

Of course, you'll need to consult the file if something goes
wrong with
wvdial. Do so by using the
more command:

more /tmp/wvdial.messages

Once your connection is up, you can browse the Web and access
other Internet services, as described later in this chapter. For now,
simply verify that your connection is working by issuing the
command:

ping www.oreilly.com

The
ping command should report that echo
packets were successfully received from the server. If not, check your
nameserver configuration.